god damn that was awesome. I mean, awful because all the other members were just laughing at him.

9/26/2014 3:10:46 PM

Quote :

"Cenciotti noted that this week’s U.S. airstrikes took place well inside airspace guarded by Syrian air defense radars and surface to air missile batteries, where Syrian planes involved in the country’s civil war usually operate. The F-22’s ability to enter a target area largely undetected is therefore extremely useful. The expert cited, in particular, the fighter’s ability to “gather details about the enemy systems with their extremely advanced onboard sensors, escort other unstealthy planes and, last but not least, attack their own targets."

I do kinda get that now, since this isn't like Libya where the goal was air supremacy. Flying through the defended airspace of a country that's not your ally, may as well use the stealthiest jet we have.

[Edited on September 26, 2014 at 4:50 PM. Reason : :]

9/26/2014 4:49:06 PM

Quote :

"The Osprey is a death trap;"

False. (quick, go site the unfortunate early days of the platform ignoring how much the Marines and SF love it today)

9/27/2014 12:30:29 PM

Yeah if I recall, the V-22's mishap rate is actually pretty good, and believe it or not, was actually pretty good during its [behind schedule and over budget] development, even as compared to other aircraft with good reputations. However, they did lose a lot of people in it, because a couple of the crashes they did have had lots of people on board. I'm not sure, maybe in the end they pushed it into operation (maybe because development had taken so long?) before it was quite ready, and paid a steep price.

I think some of the fixes were actual "fixes"; some of them were more along the lines of refining the operating envelope (i.e., "don't do ____ with the V-22, because it isn't safe to do so...I think the vortex ring state crash(es) were an example of that?)

9/27/2014 3:28:10 PM

Quote :

"The F35 is shit because its generic, not because its bad at its job. Its shit because its replacing cool planes like the A10. "

I love the A-10, but the F-35 replacing it doesn't make the F-35 bad. The F-35 has some game-changing capabilities that should be acknowledged (and some of which can't be discussed here).

On the other hand, it is a compromised design because it's trying to be too many things to too many people. I'm not one of the Boyd disciples who think that every fighter should be an F-5 or stripped-down early block F-16. That said, making the F-35 try to field a variant to be all things to all people is hampering it, and in the end, I'm not sure if the commonality will yield any rewards in the logistics chain, economies of scale in production, lowered developmental cost, etc. The parts commonality across the variants is not that high, and it seems to get lower and lower as time goes on.

Another issue is that the Navy doesn't have any good means of getting replacement engines for the F-35 out to the boat. I think they're actually thinking of bringing the S-3s out of the boneyard, refitting them with special fuselages (minus the rear cockpits, etc) and stuff to where they're halfway new airplanes, just to have a way to carry F-35 engines around. Shit like that isn't cheap!

I'm not an F-35 hater, exactly, but even aside from the ridiculous delays and cost overruns, there is a deeper fundamental problem in that I'm not convinced that it wouldn't have been more effective, faster, and cheaper to just design a couple new airplanes instead of one jack-of-all-trades with disparate subvariants.

9/27/2014 3:39:02 PM

i'm not convinced that any new plane would be easy or cheap, not with the procurement model we have

9/27/2014 3:43:08 PM

The F-35 just seems like a jet we're using to democratize stealth technology. It's intentionally just a little shitter than the F-22 so that we still have the stealthiest jet in the sky. It was designed as something we could sell to all our partners while still maintaining the overall advantage in the sky.

9/27/2014 3:47:05 PM

Did Obama Just Unify America’s Enemies?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/did-obama-just-unify-americas-enemies-111347.html#.VCcUU_ldUz2

9/27/2014 3:49:51 PM

^^^ oh man, truer words have never been spoken. I would struggle to invent a more stupid procurement model if I started from the ground up.

I'm counting that as a constant, though...I'm just saying that I really wonder if it would have been better (or less bad?) to build a couple new airplanes to do what different people needed?

^^ yes and no. better than F-22 at some things (largely due to being years newer; the F-22 might be catching up with retrofits), not as good at others.

Also, the Russians and Chinese are developing their own LO tech now, anyway. The cat is finally coming out of the bag. With that in mind, we might be making a decision that we'd rather proliferate it amongst friendly players than be the lone counterweight to threat country proliferation.

Also, counters to LO are getting better and more proliferated, too. It's by no means obsolete, but it's not the near-100% silver bullet that it once was.

9/27/2014 4:05:26 PM

the procurement model could be improved if we actually utilized the oversight and auditing that already exists in the model but is not used (but that might mean lost business to someone's district, so good luck)

9/27/2014 4:16:37 PM

So anybody want to talk about Obama's admission that we underestimated ISIS? I'm not sure if that's an intelligence failure, an admission of his own mishandling of this situation, or perhaps an attempt to justify the impending addition of more forces to this limited military engagement that clearly isn't a war.

Can we at least agree that on foreign policy this guy is horrendous? He's clearly full of shit about the scope of this military action.

9/29/2014 12:30:35 AM

I really wish that the middle east had a super power equivalent of Russia or even China that could take over this daddy daycare shit that we are doing.

9/29/2014 2:49:53 AM

^^ it's probably all 3.

I personally had never heard of ISIS until their big push into Iraq, it would be interesting to know what the intelligence community knew.

We know after 9/11 that some people were sounding alarm bells before 9/11 that went ignored, it could be that people in the gov. were talking about ISIS and its as being ignored, or it could be that no one fathomed an organized terrorist group could even assemble, so no one was looking.

Either way, it's interesting that Obama is being so honest about this, so soon.

9/29/2014 4:22:16 AM

Let's hold off on calling this honesty for just a bit shall we? Methinks this may be him getting in front of a leak that will show that actually, we knew exactly how strong they were but the intelligence was ignored. That's at least as plausible as this president being honest about his level of awareness around a situation.

This guy is a politician talking just 2 months out from an election, best to assume that anything he says is a lie.

[Edited on September 29, 2014 at 4:54 AM. Reason : Sl ]

9/29/2014 4:52:33 AM

i call bullshit, we knew exactly what ISIS was doing but didn't want to get involved

and for good reason, their recruitment is up and we are unifying multiple groups right now

9/29/2014 6:39:34 AM

^so what is your solution then? Do nothing and let them grow? Or try to bomb the shit out of them and see if it swells their ranks?

9/29/2014 7:31:33 AM

Sounds like what they really underestimated was the size of the power vacuum in Syria and the amount of chickenshit Iraqi soldiers.

9/29/2014 8:06:26 AM

^^ Let the arab states bomb them

9/29/2014 8:29:56 AM

Quote :

"Sounds like what they really underestimated was the size of the power vacuum in Syria and the amount of chickenshit Iraqi soldiers."

I find this incredibly difficult to believe. There's no way our intelligence presence in Iraq isn't amazing after we rebuilt the country from scratch.

[Edited on September 29, 2014 at 9:43 AM. Reason : w]

9/29/2014 9:42:50 AM

This guy in the WH can blame anything on bad intel and people eat it up.

9/29/2014 11:42:30 AM

Really? I see this guy in the WH blaming bad intel and everybody criticizing him. Who's eating it up?

[Edited on September 29, 2014 at 12:05 PM. Reason : your assesments always seem to be very biased]

9/29/2014 11:54:48 AM

Obama: *does anything*

Republicans (on TV, Radio, interwebs, etc.): OMG!!!! He's destroying the country! Nobody is saying anything about it in the media!!! People are in love with him! Everybody is worshipping the ground he walks on!!!! Why is nobody pointing out his countless mistakes?????

obvious trolling is obvious.

9/29/2014 12:05:20 PM

Wasn't Obama referencing this interview:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-we-underestimated-the-islamic-state-james-clapper-says/2014/09/18/f0f17072-3f6f-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

That they underestimated the will of the Iraqi army, those exact words came out of Clapper's mouth and Obama was just referencing exactly what he said?


Regardless, as someone that constantly bitches about the lack of leadership by executives (both in government and corporate) it would have been nice for Obama to include himself in pointing out any failures.

9/29/2014 12:27:32 PM

^

9/29/2014 1:15:32 PM

Fox News takes off running with a twisted narrative, no surprise there.


As I reread the clapper quote and the 60 mins transcript. It's pretty obvious the media is manufacturing controversy and fishing for clicks.

Clapper:

Quote :

"“What we didn’t do was predict the will to fight. That’s always a problem. We didn’t do it in Vietnam. We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese. In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army . .?.?. I didn’t see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming. I didn’t see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable.”"

9/29/2014 2:18:52 PM

When a group of people are openly willing to commit suicide in order to take out a crowd of folks who don't believe what they do, I'd say it is hard to underestimate that kind of will.

9/29/2014 4:01:28 PM

but much easier to under or overestimate their effectiveness as a fighting force. Just because they're willing to commit suicide doesn't mean they're willing to be a disciplined soldier.

9/29/2014 4:17:20 PM

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/28/why-obama-can-t-say-his-spies-underestimated-isis.html

Et tu, Daily Beast?

9/29/2014 5:24:11 PM

Quote :

"i'm not convinced that any new plane would be easy or cheap, not with the procurement model we have"

What model is that and what do you suggest to replace it?

9/30/2014 6:57:48 PM

isis captured a base on the outskirts of baghdad. How the hell are they advancing with 40 nations bombing them?

9/30/2014 7:23:58 PM

retard strength.

(just kidding, cognitive impairments are no joking matter)

9/30/2014 8:15:36 PM

"those dirty rats"

9/30/2014 8:30:57 PM

cost is approaching $1B, may hit $1.8B per month

10/1/2014 2:01:09 PM

that would cost the same as building one space shuttle per month (according to NASA, Endeavour cost $1.7 billion to build.)

or you could have paid for 4 shuttle missions per month with that budget. (~$450 million per mission)

10/2/2014 9:52:47 AM

how much did we cut food stamps last year? 6 months of bombing worth?

10/2/2014 9:56:25 AM

Turkey just voted to authorize military action against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. This is good news, if they get their ground forces involved, this thing could be wrapped up much quicker than expected. Certainly quicker than if Sunni/Shia militias and the Iraqi army were the only boots on the ground.

10/2/2014 1:43:49 PM

Iran and the US have boots on the ground too

what will be interesting is to see how Turkey handles the PKK, seems like this is an opportunity for Turkey to weaken the PKK

10/2/2014 1:50:15 PM

The PKK is actively fighting ISIS, aren't they?

10/2/2014 1:55:26 PM

i don't trust turkey. they consider much of the kurd leadership, who are currently the only ones fighting isis, to be terrorists. I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey went in with plans to clean all of them out of the border area.

Also, if they weaken Isis, they strengthen the kurds and unite the Kurdish state which also wants to overthrow Turkish rule of Kurdistan. It isn't outside the realm of possibility for Southern Turkey to become another Syria where the Turkish government is fighting everyone including Isis.

10/2/2014 4:52:03 PM

Right now all they'd be asked to do is defend their own damn borders and establish a buffer zone in Syria/Iraq where rebels and Kurds can stage attacks on ISIL. Erdogan doesn't want to start shit with the Kurds, he's staked a large part of his political career on appeasing them.

10/2/2014 5:28:23 PM

I can see them taking advantage of the chaos to seize control of a swath of Syria. The Turkish government REALLY doesn't like Syria right now, so I don't think they would care much if they were to carve out a large "humanitarian" sector in Syria in the name of fighting ISIS.

10/3/2014 11:03:16 AM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11140860/Qatar-and-Saudi-Arabia-have-ignited-time-bomb-by-funding-global-spread-of-radical-Islam.html

I'm just beginning to understand the role of gulf Arab states in all of this. They fund extremists to overthrow Assad, and to just generally kill Shias, then when those extremists suddenly want to overthrow their kingdoms, they lobby the US to come and drop bombs for them. All the while profiting from the destabilized Iraqi oil production, as they are the only ones that can pick up the slack.

This really is their problem and as the general in the link said: no bombing campaign is going to stop these extremists if the gulf Arab states don't stop exporting their hateful views and monetary support.

10/6/2014 9:40:00 AM

Mortars in Baghdad. What airstrikes?

Also, is it legal to arrest an American for buying a ticket to Syria? What crime has been committed if they prove he wanted to "join" isis if there is no actual plan of him committing a crime. What if he waned to join as a humintarian worker for Isis? Is that a crime?

10/6/2014 6:41:19 PM

18 USC 2339A - Providing material support to terrorists.

If they can prove that a person intended to join the fight in Syria and detained them in possession of of an airline ticket the region, it could certainly fall under the 'attempted' provision of the law.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that any American claiming to be joining ISIS as a humanitarian worker would get slapped down with 18 USC 2339A with a quickness.

10/6/2014 8:46:21 PM

that looks pretty similar to a law i always see in porn

10/6/2014 9:11:27 PM

This continued siege of Kobani is either a display of gross incompetence by our air force, or a calculated attempt to draw Turkey into the fight. CNN has video of these dudes running around and driving trucks on hilltops in broad daylight. Someone explain to me why an AC-130 with night vision hasn't just ripped these dudes apart in the middle of the night, or at the very least scared them off.

10/7/2014 5:15:48 PM

because isis/syria would shoot down a slow gunship

10/7/2014 6:08:01 PM

They can maybe shoot down a helicopter, but not an AC-130. 12 years in Afghanistan and the Taliban never shot one down.

10/7/2014 7:32:17 PM

I don't know if they'll use C-130s, but I know they are laying waste to them with Apaches. Those are my favorite to watch.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/10/u-s-now-using-apache-helicopters-to-attack-isis-in-iraq/

[Edited on October 7, 2014 at 10:16 PM. Reason : added article]

10/7/2014 10:14:50 PM

The taliban was nowhere near as well-equipped as Syria and Isis. We're talking about Russian and American military equipment. They won't dare take an apache into Syria or even far outside of Baghdad. Several were shot down in the old war.

10/7/2014 11:41:04 PM